The Computer Chronicles - Local Area Networks (1984)

An early look at local area networks examines various types of networks as well as their potential uses and drawbacks.
Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/det...

[@Designandrew]

Gary was such a visionary, he really sees through to the ultimate use of things... It's such a shame he's not alive anymore, I really don't feel like he got the recognition he deserved... but to us nerds he is a hero.. maybe that's all that matters.

[@CaptchaNeon]

Alcohol destroys lives and Gary allowed it to take his life. It's a tough thing, he would be proud with how far computers and internet have come.

[@CaptchaNeon]

One of his family members has spoken out and said that he was an alcoholic and I also believe Stewart Cheifet brought it up in on Triangulation (an interview did with Stewart a few years ago) and that he used to go out and drink and party heavy in bars, he never had a good time because he was always getting into fights and had constant hospitalizations as a result. It's really sad when people get addicted to things that quickly go to a downward spiral, trust me I've lost a lot of people in my life who I watched deteriate with their alcohol use, I've done 2 videos on my channel about it. Gary was definitely a legend, he certainly never got the credit he deserved and yeah that would freak me out to see some shrine of Steve Jobs too lol.

[@Wizardofgosz]

It's too bad Concurrent (multitasking CP/M) didn't become the defacto standard on PC's, instead of MSDOS, we'd be even further ahead, now.

[@Wizardofgosz]

Yes. Exactly. We would have traded Bill Gates for Gary, but Gary is a former hippy and was more ethical than Gates, so it would have likely been a good trade.

[@Daehawk]

Things conspired against Gary. First he was a good man in a world of cutthroat business men. Then he blew off a meeting to have his OS be the dominant one in the market because he wanted to celebrate him and his wife's anniversary. Then that same wife left him in 1983. He turned to drink which he should not have done but its called a disease for a reason. He died because of it whether through a fight or a fall or both. She died in 2005 from brain cancer 11 years after Gary. In my opinion Gary was too good a man for his work with a terrible disease.

[@Nacalal]

I always find it very interesting to look back at stuff like this and see the beginnings of common every day things (LANs in this case) and see what it's earliest stages were like

[@randywatson8347]

+Nacalal They mentioned 10mbps upwards to 1gbps :-)

[@albear972]

+Nacalal And to think that just a bit over 30 years this is considered pre-historic in computer years.

[@blackneos940]

How old are you.....? :) I ask because if you're under 20, I find it cool that someone your age, and someone my age, (I'm 25), are into things like this..... :D Basically, no matter how *advanced* things get, things like this always seem to be *relevant*..... :)

[@Nacalal]

blackneos940 19, I've always had a passion for computers but there's something about older systems that keeps me looking to the past

[@blackneos940]

Nacalal Yeah, I know what you mean..... :D When I first saw the Computer Chronicles, I was a bit cocky, looking down on those old Machines..... But the more I matured, the more I gained a newfound respect for the older Machines..... :D I'm watching one on Computer Graphics right now!..... :) It's funny how we mature, even past 18....... :)

[@nitramluap]

I remember my early LAN parties in the early 90s... Coaxial cables, terminators and then setting everyone's network address (via DIP switches) so there were no conflicts... just for some DOOM action. Haha.

[@39zack]

I remember my lan group did not know back then that you was supposed to connect the coaxial cabels in a ring 🤣

[@XKS99]

The guy hosting the game would have a few milliseconds advantage 😂

[@chell_1.]

amazing to see Gary's vision for the future

[@gepeterson2]

It's pretty amazing that this 1984 date is fully SEVEN YEARS after Datapoint's ARC System was introduced, which offered 2.5 megabit distributed interconnected-stars packet networking, transparent to existing applications, and which could easily and transparently access files on one or more connected file servers just as easily as they could access them as local files on their system's own local hard drives. Datapoint had more than 10,000 local area networks installed worldwide by 1981 (when the first IBM PC came out) so it's hard to imagine that by 1984, a supposedly serious program like Computer Chronicles would be ignorant of (and not even mention) Datapoint's ARCnet, or The ARC System LAN. Take a look on KZbin at "Datapoint ARC System" (and "Datapoint Integrated Electronic Office") and note the copyright dates on THOSE videos...!!

[@svensubunitnillson1568]

Thats great info, was looking for ARCNet

[@gepeterson2]

Glad to be able to help!! Feel free to ask me for more information....!! I was the programmer who proposed, designed, and wrote the system software for Datapoint's ARC System. (Interestingly, the first customer to get the pre-announcement version in September 1977... Chase Manhattan... we were calling the product "Internet".... but my boss told me in November that "...Gordon, we have to change the name of the product. If we call it 'Internet', it will NEVER be successful.... because people's perceptions are that networks are complicated and hard to manage." But it's interesting to wonder what today's "Internet" would have been called, if Datapoint had already taken (and kept) the "Internet" name...!) :-)

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@gepeterson2 Maybe it would still be called the "Information Super highway" :P

[@HarryStar56]

EXACTLY!!!! You just saved me from watching this video when they don't even realize that Datapoint was the "Microsoft/IBM" of their time, even with the creation of the 80xxx chips from Intel That being said, I still think of the 8600, Mids drives and a load of coaxial cables

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

The RetroBytes channel did a retrospective on ARCnet just a couple of months ago.

[@richardhines]

Company where I worked used a lot of Ungerman-Bass network equipment back in the 1980s-1990s, with XNS protocol, on a broadband network channel 6-T, worked very well, amazed still remember all this after 30 years. Eventually all got replaced with fiber and Cisco routers, which is baseband.

[@emmabentley7945]

After 60 years. Gary did indeed kill them all….

[@calvinsaxon5822]

I lööööve these videos. Fun drinking game: loser (of coin toss or whatever) has to drink one shot for every subsequent acquisition of the company represented by a guest on this show (and then the company that acquired the company) by another company and so on (if more than one guest on show, other plays choose the guest). So, I win coin toss and I make other player drink for Charlie Bass: UB -> Tandem-> Newbridge -> Alcatel -> Nokia (4 shots), but if person drinking can name all of the acquisitions in the change, person who tried to make them drink has to drink. Have Wikipedia to verify everything. Jump quickly from show to show for new guests. All shows must be from the 1980s or early 1990s (at least before crash).

[@UncleKennysPlace]

Our first biz network was a serial port daisy-chain; we updated a database on everyone's PC once a day, because it too too long at 9600 baud to do it more frequently.

[@brianr987]

This pre-dates the OSI model.

[@anthologyofinterest1]

such nerdery, i love it

[@mrtienphysics666]

This is Genesis

[@therealhardrock]

3:30 Broadband? That was a thing back in 1984? Then why didn't 99.99999999999% of American home have it until after 2000?

[@GeekBoy03]

Were you going t o pay for it?

[@Ts6451]

therealhardrock Well, not exactly, the term broadband in this connection does not refer to a fast Internet connection, but rather a way data is modulated onto a cable in a local area network.A broadband LAN device modulates the data onto carrier waves similarly to how channels would be sent on cable TV systems, it is broadband because it can use a relatively wide range of frequencies unlike baseband networks which uses no carrier frequency, but places the line coded data directly onto the cable.

[@WizzRacing]

+therealhardrock They had broadband but the standards where not set. At the time you could send and receive data on cable TV networks but the cost to upgrade head ends was expensive. It also was limited to the hardware\software used at the time. As you had cable, DSL, ADSL. etc.. and the hardware was way out of the average users budget. Much less the cost of the service provider. One reason modems were used and multi phone lines for years. As all you needed was some software, modem and some phone numbers to call. All of which was published in the backs of computer magazines for BBS, Newsgroups, User Groups etc.. Using RIP. Man those were some fun times... I even used the old RS232 cable to "Network" two PC's to each other in separate rooms. You had to build your own! I had Procomm Plus for years using Web Zeppelin. As the standards for modems was set by the phone company years before. You just had to have the correct parity setup using dip switches on the modem. Mind you all this before any web browser was ever even thought of. They had no clue what was coming until Netscape come along.

[@jaybird57]

Ok, now do this wirelessly at 1gb a second off of a single chip using 1mA current...

[@jacobbaranowski]

local networks for gaming with out of date gaming consals

[@RonJohn63]

21:21 What will IBM do? Choose the loser (token ring).

[@Ts6451]

RonJohn63 Hehe, yes. Though I guess that at the time computer networking between microcomputers were in an early and rather experimental stage, and it probably wasn't obvious what was the best way to do things.

[@RonJohn63]

Ts6451 Agreed. Before hubs, twisted pair Ethernet and the star topology, 16 Mbps Token Ring was more efficient than backbones like Ethernet over 10base2 and 10base5 (ignoring how much more expensive T-R cards were).

[@eugrus]

on the layer 2 yes, however software vise it did introduce SMB 1984 which is still the standard of data sharing in LAN networks. ia800501.us.archive.org/16/items/bitsavers_ibmpccommugram1.019856361559IBMPCNetworkProgram1.0_12755008/6361559_IBM_PC_Network_Program_1.0_Users_Guide_1985.pdf

[@mgjk]

@@RonJohn63 5 year old comment on a 40 year old technology, but have to say it for nostalgia sake. Token Ring kicked Ethernet's butt when it came to high contention. While Ethernet would bog down to uselessness at high collision rates, Token Ring hit a reasonable performance floor and kept working. The topology didn't matter, it was all the same broadcast domain. What eventually killed TR were improvements in silicon allowing for ubiquitous switches. Once hubs were replaced with switches, collisions became a non-issue.. and painfully, a bad TR card could take out a ring. So Ethernet < Token Ring < Switched Ethernet... i.e., I totally agree, TR was awesome in its day. I miss troubleshooting that stuff.

[@RonJohn63]

@@mgjk I said that, too, in a subsequent comment 5 years ago in this thread.

[@memneophilia]

mind blowing. I started in the computer field in 1985. I saw all this being put together and me as a tech ,was supporting it all. I remember all this. To this day i am an IT guy. Love that younger people watching this. The history of computing is important for IT people.

[@raven4k998]

it takes a moment just like it does today to cause it take a moment for the server to realize you want some data accessed

[@squareeyes9540]

History classes today: World War I and World War II History classes in 100 years: Computer Chronicles

[@raven4k998]

ok kids what is a local area network?

[@viata.]

You will still learn about WWI and II in 100 years. Just like how you still learn about old events (one hundred years war, for example).

[@honkhonkler7732]

The '90s was a great decade for standardization. I have an old IBM machine running Windows 98. That computer has a 3Com network card with an RJ45 connector that can plug directly into a network switch that is 22 years newer than itself and negotiate a 100Mbps link speed and IP address. Even software standards. I can transfer files to it over the network from PCs, Macs and Linux boxes which all support SMB.

[@spearPYN]

Still using retro computers here on the daily basis. They are better then latest hardware these days. Retro computing forever!

[@4zazel777]

Wifi is so crappy nowadays even I always use RJ45 connector :D (I have 600mb DSL but still it breaks down if theres a wall or whatever)

[@YouTubeCensorshipStinks]

​@@4zazel777 My company uses our credit card processing machine on WiFi. Makes me want to bust out Kali Linux and Flipper Zero for some mayhem. They didn't want to listen when I said wireless payments is a bad idea.

[@georgeh6856]

I agree. Ethernet is a dead-end technology which will never take off.

[@laszloperesztegi]

Absolutely 😆😆

[@BryonLape]

TCP/IP won. Spoiler alert.

[@standlegweak9854]

You're supposed to give the spoiler alert first, then the spoiler.

[@LumocolorARTnr1319]

@@standlegweak9854 Spoiler for those who been living under a rock the last 30 years and somehow ended up here without knowing how? :D

[@larryjohnny]

I’m still holding out... one day y’all will see the light.. yay coaxial!

[@stuartcole4845]

Given that two years prior to this show, both the US DoD and ARPANET standardised to TCP/IP, it was inevitable that it would win at those layers . I didn’t watch the whole thing but these guys seem to be talking about lower layer protocols.

[@ironfist7789]

ya, ethernet is layer 2

[@AbdiPianoChannel]

It took Doctors to explain LAN. Now any idiot with Cisco CCNP crash course can explain more complicated networks. Thank you guys for your work.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

That dude had keycard in 1984 our office building just got them a month or so back 2020 lmfao

[@deltaray3]

They weren't as secure or sophisticated back then as they are today, but they also weren't uncommon in larger enterprises.

[@blightedgrounds]

I miss the way people talked back then. Adults sounded much more sophisticated & mature.

[@unnamedchannel1237]

Because they don’t say “like” every three seconds and think before their mouth starts to open .

[@leew5382]

Ah yes the 80's the love for the color brown.

[@RapperBC]

...but you're giving it such short shrift. There was an entire rainbow of color. Red, yellow, orange, tan, burnt sienna, olive, mustard, gold, taupe, beige, caramel, honey, wheat, almond, jade, maroon, rust, walnut, chocolate, pine, cedar, oak, veneer, grained veneer, walnut veneer, walnut grained veneer, red rust pine grained veneer, sandal, wood, and sandalwood. And brown.

[@JohnMichaelson]

We loved it. When you spilled your coffee no one could tell.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@RapperBC Only in the house and offices though. Fashion was all about the pastels.... and shoulder pads. never forget the shoulder pads.

[@ian_b]

If you stood still in your brown clothes, you just disappeared against the background. Some expert camouflagers employed countershading techniques, with a dark brown jacket and lighter tan trousers. It was a fabulous time for brown, a golden-brown age.

[@Arcsecant]

Brown is the best color in the rainbow!

[@ian_b]

Watching these things we smugly smile at how primitive it all is. But I remember first networking my two PCs at home (basically, my old one and a new build) in 2002, 18 years after this, and it felt super high tech at the time just to do that. Now I've got gigabit ethernet, Wifi, multiple PCs, two tablets, a network printer and IP addresses are everyday things. We've come so very very far.

[@GerbenWijnja]

Yeah I remember hooking up two Windows 95 computers at home with coax and BNC connectors, so that we could play Command & Conquer, and Duke Nukem 3D. That was my first networking experience, and it worked great!

[@dee5298]

"Will assume a network" Holy hell that aged well. These tech guys really had their eyes on what was next. It is impressive.

[@Ichijoe2112]

@ungratefulmetalpansy Yes but, where are Micro Focus, System, and Ungermann-Bass INC today?

[@ПётрПроценко-б3к]

What's next, you mean gateways? LOL

[@FriedEgg101]

@@Ichijoe2112 They didn't capitalize hard enough.

[@BarryHolsinger]

​​@@Ichijoe2112 Around 1996-7, UB had a building at 750 Tasman Drive in Milpitas. After they vacated, my employer Com21 moved in. A few years later, M. Barron and Laubach realized that TCP/IP, not ATM, would be the standard transport over HFC (cable modems). So Com21 fizzled out. Now I want to research how many different companies have rotated through that building... [Edit: It is an Indian restaurant as of 2023.] Many years ago I attended church with some UB old timers, the most famous being John Davidson (admitted gratuitous name drop 😅 )

[@oksyar]

I love how Gary used to be little conservative or shy and later on he talked on these shows like a pro, really wish i'd get a chance to meet this guy. I hate how time works!

[@mansharker8]

I am glad that the world soon settled on Ethernet TCP/IP and the OSI model as the network standard. Apple talk trying to connect to Tolkien Ring, then Ethernet and another standard is a bit of a nightmare, you would need a router / gateway just to merge the standards together....it was quite a mess, and I'm old enough to remember it.

[@calvinsaxon5822]

"In one study, 69% of students knew how to draw a 90 degree angle on a computer, but only 19% of them knew how to draw one on paper." Can't. Stop. Laughing. Help.

[@raven4k998]

in another study 69% of people had an orgy in 80's clothes

[@blackneos940]

LAN party!!!..... :D

[@XxsoonerbornxX]

"We've heard of Ethernet. What's going on with that?" "In some terms you might call it a success" LOL these guys up there trying to make people forget all about Ethernet. They knew it was better.

[@Drizzt_Do_Entreri]

Some experts thought learning computer programming was a waste of time 😂

[@kewkabe]

THEY SHOULD HAVE A NETWORK THAT GOES AROUND THE ENTIRE WORLD AND CONNECTS COMPUTERS TOGETHER

[@Stenstorp]

That's impossible, don't be absurd.

[@luiscipher4855]

Yeah and people would just use it for posting stupid comments and watch videos on some online platform, that's just a pipe dream... oh wait....

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Actually they had telenet and tymnet, which were the closest analogies to the internet. Online systems such as CompuServe, Genie, qlink, etc, used the network to connect folks online. But the main purpose was to connect business systems together, which didn't have much use during non business hours and hence the popularity of the consumer systems.

[@thomasschreiber9559]

Only if you watch pornographic videos and look at dirty pictures.

[@AshtonCoolman]

@@luiscipher4855 one day we'll have FTL travel and will be able to explore the universe. We'll end up using it for practical jokes and space memes.

[@adamantine001]

watching this show is like reading IT-related school books but we listen to the people that shaped the knowledge of those books.

[@richardtwyning]

Dr. Michael Pliner at 5:45 into the video, wow, visionary! He basically foresaw and described the broadband we have today in 2023. Amazing 👍 I love these videos as this was the era when I got into computing. I think I was 14 when this program was made. It's amazing looking back on these with the machines and technology we have today to realise how lucky we are.

[@mansharker8]

I also remember how significant the jump from 56k dial up to 1.5 megabit DSL was....web pages wouldn't take all day and I could actually do online gaming pretty well with a PS2 Slim. Now a days, 1.5 megabits is too slow to do much of anything! lol.

[@TheJ602]

10 megabit ain’t bad for back then

[@HeadlightMorningGlow]

20:20 Broadband as an alternative to ethernet! It's a shame this programme wasn't allotted more time; seems like even when narrowing it down to one topic they're having to rush.

[@Ts6451]

HeadlightMorningGlow They did actually make a broadband version of ethernet, the 10BROAD36 system, It offered some advantages, like a much larger range(3,6 km) compared to the 10BASE5(500m) and the ability to use a wide frequency range (which is why it is "broadband"), but the complexity and expense compared to the baseband systems meant it never became popular for LANs and fiber optic versions became more common for backbones and building interconnections and campus area networking.Today the term broadband generally refers to a high speed WAN connection irrespective of whether it actually uses a broadband signaling scheme or not.

[@HeadlightMorningGlow]

Ts6451 Thanks for the info! Despite my interest in these programmes, it - and the comments below - tend to expose just how little I actually know! lol Ever thought of doing a video on it yourself?

[@jordanhazen7761]

The Sytek devices shown here were very early cable modems, of course orders of magnitude slower than modern ones. Instead of a CMTS at the headend, they needed only a simple band-shifting repeater to translate upstream frequencies to downstream. Campuses with an existing CATV system could add this without having to run new cable, though often amplifiers would need to be replaced with bidirectional ones. My university still had some remnants of this old infrastructure, long retired in favor of Ethernet and inter-building fiber links running (at that time) FDDI.

[@RighteousBruce]

WOWWW the Random Access part at the end is like a crystal ball for a few of the topics

[@Craiglaca1]

Then the hackers came along and ruined everything

[@georgiaguardian4696]

Looking back at the development of the computer industry in general in 1984, it provides a lot of perspectives for how much we have advanced and what could be ahead of us.

[@fitfogey]

40 years ago basically. True pioneers.

[@DavidPaulMorgan]

wow. in the mid 80's, my ethernet OSLAN cable was 12mm ½" thick. the transceivers were the size of a cigarette box. forunately my ICL-Series39 system also had macrolan - 10Mb/s fibre-optic cable with macrolan 4 port switches to connect the peripherals. that was '86. the fat ethernet cables were for the band printers and terminal clusters.

[@DavidPaulMorgan]

oh, and the 'county' were an IBM customer, so they were pushing token-ring all the time.

[@rustynail6819]

Gary cut through the bullshit of these guys. Dog and pony show and Gary was like yeah not impressed...I just want to get a file from the network and shouldn't know it's a network. I think if Gary was alive today he would be impressed and also incensed at technology today. He would have seen how insidious the smart phone is. How it's an addiction and people are way to tied to them.

[@zezeandjr4110]

Gary, the Steve Jobs of his days and some, boy, what a loss his death was..

[@abrahamfarias1856]

Wow talking about fiber and Ghz in the early 80s and only having dial up in the late 90s and now a days only having up to 25 mbps in most areas unless you live in big cities, thats embarrassing

[@LutzHeidbrink]

I miss the old mailboxes, fido net and that sound of the good old modem. today they install apps like calm, for me the sound of modem brought instant reassurance. those were my "white noise" lol

[@miles2378]

I too miss the modem Screach.

[@gf4266]

In the early 1980s, I just graduated from high school, going to college, and was a Radio Shack sales person. I was trying to sell TRS-80 Model II and 16s to a business. Part of this proposal was using Arcnet to link the computers together, to be able to share files and printers. Never got sold, however I had some hands-on experience in both cabling and TRS-80 networking. Later, I worked at a factory floor supporting broadband networking -- that was a pain since it was analog, and in order to use the channels, you have to convert the digital to analog for physical transport, then convert back for the computers to digest the transmission (this is where “gateways” come in). Plus you have to have amplifiers at every fixed distance. Now we have high-speed Ethernet baseband, but the network protocols support video, audio, and data with more robust error-correcting capabilities. A far cry from what was being developed in the 1980s and 1990s.

[@FusionC6]

17:13 I've never seen a printer start up so fast. xD

[@Snappers1_]

Technology is just more complicated these days.

[@deltaray3]

Dot matrix printers were nearly instantaneous. There was no need to capture the entirety of a page or a whole document in memory and convert it to postscript, etc. It just started printing as it received the characters. On older terminal based systems that had no display, this was the way of interacting with the computer. You'd type a command and then you'd see the output directly on the line printer, so it needed to be kinda fast.

[@Daehawk]

10 years from this my wife got me a 28.8 USRobotics modem for that Christmas. 10 years after that I got a wifi router and cable internet. 10 years after that I was kinda burnt out :)

[@sadatrafsanjani]

Imagine, someone is watching this 2023, taking inspiration for his next research topic

[@AcornElectron]

Ethernet is not an end all...... ...............

[@TravisStamper]

I know a guy that is supposed to be an IT director that has no clue. I may send to him in the hopes he learns something

[@inerlogic]

I don't think that ethernet thing will catch on..... sorry Gary.....

[@iLife64]

Broadband absolutely murdered Baseband

[@jordanhazen7761]

Both are still in widespread use today (e.g. nearly all Ethernet standards, up to 10Gb/s are baseband), though of course nowadays "broadband" often is used imprecisely for any fast connection, regardless of signal modulation details.

[@EirkenElite]

These guys were on point about the future

[@christopherd3861]

Nice to see actual smart people talk on television, too bad it's 40 years ago

[@sideburn]

Is this the only one where everyone sits in the dark and tries not to move much while the credits roll? 😂

[@mcswabin207]

@17:12 I guess it was important in the 80s to slam the enter key for anything to work.

[@jacobbaranowski]

over the same cabal you can watch TV, go on your computer and danlode files and print...so futuristic

[@hiker64]

I also started computer career in the early 80s and was there for all of this. They were some great times and we had to be jacks of all trades, hardware, software, network installation and configuration. Things were easier then as there was no Internet... for a while.

[@lwnf360]

I love how Ethernet was introduced only 2 years before this aired. 😂

[@jordanhazen7761]

The twisted-pair variants (10baseT and successors) were still a few years out, though, and iirc even 10base2 was not yet available in '84, only "Thicknet" 10base5 with its AUI-attached external transceivers, vampire taps, and N-connector splices.

[@FriedEgg101]

Wow, I was 3 when this aired. 15 years later I was just discovering LAN parties.

[@ochiorbus]

I love this show.

[@danielcubillos1325]

users can "even" share data..... oh man :D I do love this program.

[@markshade8398]

Some really interesting perspectives here. So much of this didn't come trur and some did. "Ethernet has been SOMEWHAT successful".... And baseband..... Well it is 99% gone. (I'm sure that somewhere out there is a VERY OLD left over untouched little tiny network on baseband (I have seen some amazing relics hang on WAY beyond there time!).

[@alienxna6511]

So fortunate to have worked in the Networking arena and enjoyed every minute of it. Started on ICL Mainframes in early '80's with ICL's C03 protocols and FEPs (FDM, SDM, TDM), ICL DRS with MicroLAN, ICL DRS300 with OSLAN, and my favourite testing/implementing 3rd Party networking on ICL's first IBM-compat PC, the DRS PWS - had first versions of IBM's baseband and Token-Ring(LU6.2) LANs, 3Com, U-B, Novell Netware 1.0a. Halcyon days .. when I see a retro PC load with banners of 'netBIOS' and 'netBEUI' memories come back of configuring early Network adapter cards with the correct IRQs and DMAs so the damn things worked!!

[@sanyr80]

24:30 Pretty crazy how true that turned out being.

[@c7261]

So true! I wonder if they knew just how toxic and anti-woman the technology/gaming sector would become. Disappointed in humanity 😢

[@jordanhazen7761]

@@c7261 There was actually more gender balance in computer science prior to the mid-80s, in the heyday of mainframes & minis, with a lot of regression since the PC revolution; various theories as to why.

[@jonathankleinow2073]

27:00 I wonder if SweetLady and MisterMike are still together.

[@looneyburgmusic]

When they were talking about LANs, they left out the most important use - playing video games...

[@spritemon98]

Here's a better option. Download porn games

[@Silvers24]

This is so amazing to watch. Sure today we know what all this is. but to hear someone say LAN in full, and take time to explain how the tech is working in itself is amazing! And teaches a lot IMO.

[@BarryHolsinger]

11:29 The trillion dollar question to be answered over the next two decades! Those entrepreneurs and companies that pondered this question (are internetworking standards important?) would go on to become the god emperors of digital communications. Two of the most important, IMO, would be Cisco and 3Com. (But nothing lasts forever!)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Hard to believe that “baseband versus broadband” was a real controversy. In the end, the sharing of the wire was achieved by making everything digital, so the multiplexing was done at the frame/packet level, within a common transport protocol. So baseband won.

[@PhilMoskowitz]

It was around this time that Xerox declined to market Ethernet, which its PARC group developed. "Why do we need this when there's Token Ring?"

[@v9turner]

In my 1983 networking book "Ethernet" was a footnote in the index! Also had the prediction that someday the whole world would be connected.

[@joshroolf1966]

Bonkers to hear about the state of the art in 84', the year I 1st played 'Oregon trail' on our school systems first computers ever, on one of the last days of kindergarten..:::😂🙈🧠💢💚

[@StatSynergy]

Wow, we take this so much for granted these days, 5G getting 700mbps and 6G getting possibly 1tbps in as early as 2030 is going to make even todays networking primitive

[@BarryHolsinger]

23:23 In 1983 or 1984, my high school got an Apple ][+ which was the first personal computer I ever touched.

[@sharpisharp]

This makes me wanna do a big LAN-party!!!!!

[@uglyduckling81]

few years back i ran a 12 man lan in garage. Was the first dedicated lan party i had been to since 1999. I ran it around christmas so basically all my friends had time off. It was so successful I ran another one the following Christmas. Everyone made sure they were available again and it was a total blast again.

[@CMDRScotty]

Being a 90's child LAN brings back memories.😀

[@ammosophobia]

By '89 Charlie Bass would be going through women like quarters in a pinball arcade.

[@TheLawrenceWade]

So prescient. Wow. At the time, I was a kid entering type-in programs on my TI-99/4A and saving them to cassette.

[@attila1746]

Ah, the good 'ol days, when we needed to get down into the weeds..... broadband vs. baseband, star vs. ring, ethernet vs. token-ring. That was when just getting one up and running was a great accomplishment ! I miss my Novell Netware 86.... LOL.

[@drewproductions1358]

Wow did not know that Gary was the guy in the real urban legend about him not selling DR Dos to IBM. That was one major fork in the road not taken.

[@oksyar]

I think that waiting for computer was a calm lifestyle, it was comforting in someway. Now its all like woosh whats next? cmon cmon cmon, lol, hasty lifestyle

[@fightingquads9198]

Fast forward to 2019, broadband has been the defacto transport protocol, lans have become essentially peripherals to the wan or gan(global area network) which has become what we are use to now. Ethernet is the base of network connectivity for the vast majority of home and soho applications, even for most businesses, with big business having a large portion of their networks supported by fiber, but even those companies still have miles and miles of ethernet cabling in their infrastructure.

[@BlownMacTruck]

“GAN” isn’t a thing. LANs are hardly just peripherals to the Internet. You posted a comment that tried to be authoritative about the current state of networks but just stated the obvious and you still got that wrong.

[@animalvideos8477]

Gary Killed 'm all

[@ПётрПроценко-б3к]

Their concepts of wire, terminal, session are pretty hard to part remember part learn about now. And they really were as clumsy and hard to adapt to when Novell NetWare was around. It's almost as unnatural from modern point of view as Linux switchable consoles in the age of GUI domination. In comparison shared directories and shared desktops are natural.

[@Jobberwocky]

The two network guys were sharp and were correcting network application term with the correct term network protocols. Standards

[@ryanfroula6479]

At 13:30, what was the terminal they were using to demonstrate centralized intelligence?

[@svensubunitnillson1568]

As a network student myself it's cool to see how the perspectives have developed over the years. i guess the RFC1925 still holds true.

[@andrewsmyname]

RFC1925 is a staple, but we wouldn't be where we are today without RFC2324

[@murderdoggg]

19:43 lol it's so nice to be from the future, looking back on our computer naivety.

[@gzk6nk]

This takes me back! That dumb VT100 terminal to LAN connection looks to work like the DEC terminal server. I also remember when 'broadband' meant a carrier-based LAN (which was a technology that soon died out) as opposed to a baseband LAN, either Token Ring or Ethernet. Of course, Ethernet later became king!

[@ryanfroula6479]

It looks like a VT100, but the screen seems a bit too close to center to be an OG VT100.

[@melmaciandissenter2324]

KISS

[@seanf5634]

At 15:45 he talks about using a password to keep "intruders" out of the network. I am thinking the term "hacker" was not in general use at this time for networking computers.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

Watched the "Making the most of the Micro" BBC Computer Literacy TV programs (these old videos are available on a special archive website for them) and they had a live episode in which they were hacked and they used the term hackers/hacked so I guess it depends on the person on what they called it.

[@johnsenchak1428]

No Way , in 1984 I was using a TI-99A computer writing BASIC

[@Mrx2002]

Wow they had no idea how well Ethernet would take off!!

[@thepumpkingking8339]

Yea. Thirty years later. On a two pair copper cable. Bell Labs using the prototype technology XG-FAST. Transferred a whopping 1 Gbps. Symmetrical bandwidth. Over a 30M distance, on Standard copper cable !!!!!!!. USB3 : 60MB/s : 0.48 gbps* Thunderbolt : 1250 MB / s : 10 gbps* SATA3.2 : 1969 MB/s : 15.75200 gbps* * speed conversion's using Google.

[@Ts6451]

Well, we must remember that while Ethernet still have some aspects of what they are talking about here, it was very limited back then, Ethernet II over thick coaxial cable(10BASE5) with a bus type topology, and it probably weren't that obvious back then that it would develop into a common layer 2 used on many types of media. Of course, there was something using Ethernet over twisted pair and in a star topology back in 1984, namely the AT&T StarLAN project, and so it is possible that if it had been featured on this episode, it would have been under that name. StarLAN was actually adopted as the first twisted pair standard for Ethernet; 1BASE5. Though this never became widely used, it did form the basis for 10BASE-TMrx2002

[@RonJohn63]

The Pumpking King Yeah, but *30M* is less than 100 feet. That's not very practical. And they probably wanted to charge a *lot* (even by the standard of the day) for it.

[@fakereality96]

15:05 Smells a lot like OpenSSH/SCP to me. 🤔

[@gageboy14]

Tech today will look like tech did here 40 years in the future.